Old Souls
by FunkyWashingMachine
Summary: Many years later, the Paladins have been reincarnated into other beings.
1. Chapter 1

He loved the stars.

He had no name to call himself.

The humans called him "Midnight" and kept him in a cage.

He had lived in the jungle before. He climbed the trees and moved in the shadows and looked at the stars.

Here in the cage, the stars were all he had left.

It was like he had never gone anywhere. But he didn't know why.

The humans spoke many words over him.

"Population. Endangered. Conservation. Specimen."

He could hear them. He could understand.

And gradually, he began to learn, his cage mates could not.

They paced the enclosure, they yowled for their food.

They missed their freedom, too.

But they didn't love the stars.

He began to realize he was alone. And that maybe, somewhere, he had lost something very important.

Perhaps it was the stars. Perhaps it was a name.

Perhaps it was an entire being with thoughts and places and dreams and love.

It was lonely in the cage. It was lonely on the ground.

Every night he watched the stars and felt something terrible ripping him inside.


	2. Chapter 2

Melinda had dreams of another life.

She didn't talk about it anymore.

"You'll grow out of it," they said.

She didn't.

She dreamt about lions.

Her name was wrong.

"You're just pretending," they said.

She didn't have many friends. Only visions.

The visions weren't always specific. Lions, ships, people she trusted.

And sometimes they were viscerally real.

She had died. She knew exactly how.

She knew how some of her friends had died, too.

She didn't remember their names.

They were more of a feeling than a memory.

She loved them. She remembered THAT.

She didn't love anyone now. That wasn't such a strange feeling, either.

* * *

Melinda depersonalized on a regular basis.

 _Is this really who I am?_

Her body and her life were both strangers.

That was why she hurt herself. Not to punish, but to bring herself back to where she was.

They called it a lot of things. They never called it reincarnation.

* * *

They'd mostly left her alone until the incident with the dog.

The sight of him made her feel like she'd been stabbed.

He made her see things. He made her KNOW things.

The dog's name was Lance.

It was somebody she'd known a long time ago.

Someone from before she was herself.

She'd loved him.

She'd loved him very much.

In that other ethereal world, they had died. They'd been together.

A boy named Lance, with blue eyes and an unguarded smile.

One of the first friends she'd ever had.

She called him by his name.

He looked at her, howled louder than any dog she'd heard before, jumped on her and knocked her over.

His owners pulled him back.

"Bruno, stop it!"

She couldn't even tell them she was fine. She was crying.

It was Lance, it was him, she didn't remember why she loved him so much but she knew that she did, they'd been friends and they died and they'd touched each other's minds with the lions.

"You remember me," she whispered to the dog.

He nodded and came in close.

* * *

They didn't call the cops until she broke into the house.

She was good at quietly breaking windows. But she wasn't used to stealing an entire dog.

She could see that he was going to come with her.

But he was a dog, and he was Lance, and he didn't want to leave his family behind.

He hesitated just long enough for her to get caught.

* * *

She'd been young. She told the truth.

And that was what kept her out of the detention center. She was mentally unfit, she clung onto strangers' dogs and cried about lions.

There was a home out there for disturbed youth. She needed permission to go outside.

They kept her on an antipsychotic. They watched her take it every time.

She told them she didn't see lions anymore.

But she had nowhere else to go and they kept her there.

She saw the lions. She felt them every day.

And she wondered if Lance knew her name.


	3. Chapter 3

There were always humans outside the enclosure. They talked about him.

He didn't like being talked about, being watched, in a cage.

"He gets medicine to calm him down," they said. "People make him nervous."

They said it every day. It felt wrong.

It felt like…

Like he was one of THEM and they were treating him like an animal.

It was a strange thought. But it wouldn't go away.

"Midnight's a funny one," the humans would say. "He doesn't really like to sleep."

He didn't.

It felt dangerous.

The others panthers weren't like that.

He wasn't like them at all.

He realized why on the day he saw the girl.

He felt his heart stop.

On the other side of the fence, something that changed him inside.

He knew her.

He didn't know HER.

But he knew her spirit.

With his breath coming strange, he approached.

They had seen millions of stars together.

"Look at that! He likes you!" one of the humans said.

She was watching him. She had her fingers around the chain-link wires. She looked like a human about to die, thinking of everything at once.

She must have known. She was friends with his spirit.

There were two rows of fencing and he couldn't get close.

He remembered now that she'd loved him. She'd loved him and she knew his name.

They had once been a part of some whole.

The one who had loved him more than anybody.

It hurt him just to think of it.

But he couldn't stop, seeing her there, he saw years go by and memories unfold and time and names come back to him.

She had loved him more than anyone.

He took care of her.

She was scared and alone and too hurt to love anybody, but she loved HIM, he'd made her a promise, he was the only person to promise her ANYTHING and she loved him, and it hurt him so much to remember.

She'd been a boy named Keith. She had trusted him, and he took care of her.

He'd wanted her to have the whole universe.

And for a time, they had the stars.

The girl put a hand through the wires.

"Don't do that! The fence is there for a reason!"

He pawed at the barrier on his side.

Badly, he wanted to touch her.

He bellowed in frustration.

"Come on, I think you're scaring him," somebody said to the girl. "He's not usually like that."

They led her away, but she kept looking back. Right in his eyes, right in his soul, he knew her and she knew him and they had loved each other and gone to see the stars.

She spoke to him before she was gone.

"Shiro."


	4. Chapter 4

She came back when it was dark.

She came there with bolt cutters and something in her heart and no plan at all.

There would be no going back anywhere.

But it was the closest thing to going back she had ever had.

It was too dark to see him, but she whispered his name.

A crinkle in the darkness, the sound of the grass, the breath of a creature, something she could almost feel the warmth of.

"I'm gonna get you out of here," she said.

She couldn't see him but it all felt right.

The first wire was nearly silent.

"You know, I'm not free either."

The second made a grating sound.

"I really hope you understand."

He had been the only one to understand her before.

When the first barrier was open, she reached out to touch him.

He was rough-coated and wet on the face and warm.

His snout moved into her hand. She cried.

"Thank you."

There were watchmen carrying flashlights. They weren't all that close yet.

From their light she could see his eyes.

She could see years and years in those eyes.

It was dark and his face wasn't human, but she would swear she could see that he loved her.

But she wouldn't have known what love looked like from a human, anyway.

She cut the last of the wires and opened the wall.

"I don't know where we're going," she said. "But it's not gonna be here."

And the panther, the one they called Midnight, stepped through.


End file.
